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“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.”
― Chuck Close

How does inspiration "work" for you? What needs to happen for you to get into your creative zone? What to do when you are stuck? Have advice? Join the group and let us know.

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Discussion Forum

I will be leading a panel discussion at this March NCECA conference in Houston, Texas, along with Don Reitz and Cynthia Bringle. The title of the panel is Aesthetics and Aging. I would welcome any comments about how one keeps the creative flame…Continue

On inspiration...Sometimes it helps me to see what others are doing and what concepts they are pursuing in their individual bodies of work, also paying special attention to artists working in mediums outside of my primary. I often take the…Continue

I am often inspired by beauty! Whether it's something natural like trees and flowers, or even buildings. I was in the National Portrait Gallery today and I saw a postcard of Louise Brooks and Gary Cooper and bought them. I love drawing people and…Continue

A few things to think about:How much time to you spend on new possible forms, styles, projects?Is there ever a drive to do something entirely different from your established and successful work?Are you afraid of your customer base/peer base not…Continue

True, many of us feel the same, inspiration is everywhere and at anytime. As a former graphic designer, drawing sketches was the proccess for me and I still like doing that today. But there is nothing like touching the materials! This is the real…Continue

I can be inspired by just about anything. Focusing on one inspiration is the hard part for me. I have a history of too many media due to exactly this combination.It's interesting to note that my recent work has become a bit more focussed since a bad…Continue

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